$2,000 for indie game development is perfectly fine! 🤑

A small cheque can help an indie team go from an idea to its first sales. Why do we start funding discussions at tens of millions of rubles?

$2,000 for indie game development is perfectly fine! 🤑

At Video Game Week, I moderated a session on global video game hubs. An idea shared by a participant from Brazil really caught my attention.

The programme's premise: give an indie developer or a micro-studio a very small cheque — say, $2,000 — and help them earn their first $500–2,000 from their first game.

By game development standards, that's modest funding. But the team goes through the entire process: coming up with a game, making it, releasing it, finding players and earning its first revenue. It starts the next project with experience, not just faith in an idea.

I suspect the programme itself sees little financial return. But it helps create a studio that knows how to take a game all the way to sales.

Here in Russia, discussions about indie funding usually start at 10, 20 or 30 million rubles. Who will give a team a small cheque so it can complete that first cycle? An angel investor, perhaps — if you can find one.

Maybe we shouldn't be skipping this stage?